Go ahead - drive

Let me being with a few words from Ani, who is (I'm convinced) the most talented lyricist of our time.

i was a long time coming
i'll be a long time gone
you've got your whole life to do something
and that's not very long
so why don't you give me a call
when you're willing to fight
for what you think is real
for what you think is right

I was thinking yesterday as I was driving, aka my Ani time, about legacies. We all have them and we all leave them. Sometimes we come into a wonderful legacy and leave the world with a decidedly worse one. Others, and this is my aspiration, we come into a legacy of the not so great and leave behind one that the word improvement cannot begin to touch. The legacy I came into was, to put it mildly, desperation. My birth family was (and is) riddled with illness both physical and mental, drugs, abandonment, and heartache. My mom and dad (who adopted me), while wonderful people, were desperate for a child and had suffered many losses of many varities over the years of working toward parenthood. Needless to say, I had no shoes and yet very large shoes to fill all at once. A long time coming...yep that was me. We all are, really. Generations upon generations before us set up for our arrival. And our mark is left for generations to follow. What we're leaving though, that's another story.

It occurred to me as I followed this highway of thought how easily I've fit into this generation I was born into. This isn't the first time I've thought this, but I'm glad to have lived in the years I have. We have gotten to witness so much history and change, some wonderful and some terrible. But, with each new generation there comes more change...as we all know change is inevitable. Each of us make a mark on the world, even if by affecting one single person...that person is marked and will go on to mark others. Boom. Your mark is made.

As a parent, I'm more than aware that my greatest chance at leaving a mark is through my children. I am no one spectacular. But I am raising my children, I hope, to believe in what I have to offer - to grab ahold of my legacy. What I am aiming for that legacy to be is this...and you must hear me out...feminism. I'm not talking about that canned version of girl power Shee-Ra women are better than men version thing. I don't mean woman's rights or equality, although those things are plenty important. What I want to hand down is appreciation of the feminine, and more importantly understanding. I want to empower my daughters, who will empower theirs, who will empower theirs, and so on. I also hope to pass this through my work to my clients and pretty much any woman open to receiving it. Possession of the femine nature is powerful, all we have to do is grab it.

I don't know how my time gone will be. I know we are all a long time gone...that has to be the greatest truth I've ever heard. I have been handed down legacies from generations ago. Those molded southern women who lived in their old southern homes, rocked on their old southern porches, and died in their old southern beds. I hope in a few generations the grandchildren of my children will remember my legacy. I hope they will know of my battle scars and remember birth and rebirth that comes with being feminine. I hope the daughters that follow long after me never let themselves be brought down by social ideas and pressures. And I hope the sons never seek to bring them down.

For the beautiful babies I have seen enter this world, as they are such an intrical part of my mark, I hope they go through life exactly as they were born - gently, with love, and never choosing violent intervention when careful watching will do.

No, this legacy wasn't what I was born into. We aren't always a long time coming and gone in the same ways. Which, leads me perfectly to my closing quote by (of course) Ani.

and i was shocked
to see the mistakes of each generation
will just fade like a radio station
if you drive out of range

So, go ahead...drive. Live your own life and make one hell of a legacy in the process.

So I'm wondering...

Can you really say that you hate drama if drama seems to follow you?

If everybody thinks you're really a bad ass person, does that actually make you one?

How can a person be one way in one situation and completely different in another?

Why does age really make a person so different?

Why do we claim to want answers to questions we really don't want?

Are we all as complicated as we like to think we are?

How many licks does it take?

I mean really, any answers people?

Congratulations to meet you

I am reading this really great book right now by Elizabeth Gilbert called Eat Pray Live. Yesterday I came across something in the book that I knew I would need to share. This book is about this lady's (Elizabeth's) nine month journey in three different countries. She lives for three months in Italy, in an Ahsram in India, and with a monk in Indionesia looking for peace and spiritual growth. She embarks on this journey after a nasty divorce closely followed by parting ways with a lover whom she had fallen in love with immediately after her marriage. While talking with a friend at the Ashram about the lover, she tells him that she believed the former lover to be her soul mate. And this is what he told her:

"People think a soul mate is a perfect fit...but a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. And thank God for it."

How amazingly insightful this was. I am of the belief that no one on this Earth has only one soul mate. I believe we each have many walking around in the world who we might or might not come across at different points in our lives. They may present to us in the form of a lover, a spouse, a friend, or even a stranger. I have been fortunate enough to encounter a handful of true soul mates over the years. The thing is, it always hurts like hell to have to let them go. But this, this eased some past pain I was holding on to.

Because each of these people have caused me to change. They have caused me to examine something in myself and spark forward motion in my life. And if this forward motion occurs, and I am a better person because of their presence in my life, then losing them isn't really a loss. Their presence was merely a catalyst and they have served their purpose. And Liz's friend, Richard from Texas, is right. To hang on to them forever would be more pain than a person can tolerate. We would forever remain stuck in repeating cycles of whatever was supposed to start the internal change without ever changing.

Now, I feel compelled to add one more thing here. I do have a few soul mates still present in my life. Some are newer than others, and my relationships with them are constantly being defined and redefined. Painful? Hell yes, sometimes it is. But love is painful, I've learned.

Anyway, like I said, this beautiful little insight Mr. Richard from Texas was kind enough to share with Liz offered me a little healing and growth. I thought it might do the same for some of you.

Love and light, beautiful people.

Pass the potatoes, please

With both of my September births behind me, I feel a kind of relief, excitement, and a wave of something fresh in the air. The births were both beautiful, each in their own right. Both moms were strong and amazing, as each birthing woman is to me. I will forever be changed by these two little souls entering the world, as each before has changed me and each to follow will. I will not tell their stories here, because those stories do not belong to me to tell. But I am proud. And tired. :) But much more proud.

Birth always makes me think. Sometimes those thoughts are strange. But, hey, really strange thoughts are nothing new for me. These two births have made me realize something. I have gotten older. And with age, I have gotten wiser. Thank the beautiful Goddess I have finally gotten wiser. For the first time in a very long time I feel in control of myself and wise. I am fulfilled and content. Wow, imagine that.

Here's an analogy that came to me tonight that I'd like to share. People are like food. Some people are like the salad that is served before the meal. You pick at them for the pieces you like, the pieces that are good to you, and leave the rest. The salad doesn't ever fill you up, really it doesn't do anything at all for your hunger, and may even wind up only pissing you off.

Others are side dishes. They look pretty on your plate and usually even taste really good. But you are better off not having too much of them, or else you may not have room for the good stuff.

Then there's the people who are like dessert - amazingly tempting and wonderful in small quantities. You should always have dessert from time to time, by all means a little indulgence is a delicious thing, but too much can do you in.

Then...aaah then...there's the best part - the main course. The meat and potatoes to those of us Southerners. It fills you up, sustains you and gives you energy to continue until your next meal. These are the people that make life so wonderfully worth living.

It's nice to think I'm somebody's meat and potatoes.

To S & J, thank you for inviting me to share in such an amazing and intimate time in your lives. To Ezra & Wyatt, thank you for allowing me to welcome you the moment your souls entered this Earth. May your journey here be as worthwhile and fulfilling as you have helped mine to be.

Oh the woes of parenting

Recently I've become more and more aware of how quickly my baby girl is growing up. I mean I've watched her before, seen the clothes become too small in what feels like a day's time, watched her hair that started as shirly temple curls piled up on her head now reach in amazingly beautiful tendrils down her back, heard the talk about boys and friends at school. She's only 6 (seven in a little over a month) but the hardest part about not homeschooling is that the growing up happens so painfully quick.

I've recently accepted that I am in the very near future going to have to talk to her about female cycles. Little girls are starting their periods younger and younger and it is important to me that she hears correct information from home rather than from some other confused kid. All of this is part of the growing up.

So today after her nap she went to hug me and somehow my nose was level with her armpit and much to my horror I noticed an odor. Armpit smellies on my not-quite-seven-year-old daughter! Gasp! So I did some research and there are theories that sometimes it's what their eating (thanks Janet for the specific suggestions) or that this happens in overweight children (she isn't even close to being overweight lol). But mostly, the concensus is that this just happens sometimes. Doesn't seem to be an indicator of early puberty either. So I told her it was time to have nightly baths (we normally do every other night) and that she would need to start wearing deodorant. This, of course, she loves.

Then, to add to my sadness of how quickly she's growing, she decided to take her first ever alone shower. We just got the alone bathing down! But she did it and she was so proud.

I am so proud too. I want my children to grow up, really I do. I love the thought of watching them grow into independent beings and see who they turn out to be. Whoever that is, of course, I will have more pride in than imaginable. But this, this is the bittersweet part. Because as much as I want to watch them grow, nothing has ever hurt as bad as the letting go. And it starts when they're babies. We have to let go a centimeter at a time to let them walk, to let them make friends, to let them start school, to let them start visiting the friends they've made. Each little bit we let go is closer to independence and further from those days we could wrap them up and keep them protected from the big, wide world. For now, she's so small I fill her entire line of vision. I can conquer the world as far as she is concerned. And it's the now, that beautiful now, that I am going to relish in.

My idea of feminism...

I've read so many perceptions on feminism that are all about supposed female power. But this power is talked about to make women equal to, or sometimes better than, men. It is about equal rights, independence, and acceptance. The old adage of women can do anything men can do backwards and with heels on. Women think other women who choose to stay home and raise their children are weak because of these attitudes. We fought our way out of the home, out of the kitchen, why would we choose to be back there?

I don't see feminism in this way. To me, feminine power isn't about voting, equal pay, power positions, and business meetings. Feminism is about exactly that: the feminine. The possession of a womb. The power of giving life.

Women are the only ones who possess that ability. Men were afraid of that, the mystery of the womb they didn't understand. The place in our bodies that cultivates life. The empty space that gives way to a man's greatest pleasure: our cunts. They didn't understand these spaces. They didn't understand the processes that in our bodies miracously take place month in and out. This unknown, this fear, is what forced us into the home. This is why we had to fight our way out.

Long, long ago; long before our societies were formed; women were in power. We were revered. Our cunts were literally worshipped and we were the leaders. Women taught spiritual matters, which were interwoven with sexual matters. Girl power had a whole new meaning.

I love being a women. I am thankful for a Creator who chose to instill those abilities of the feminine with us. It is this version of feminism I wish more of us could accept. Rather than seek out acceptance in spite of not owning a penis, demand respect because of our cunts. Demand that soctiety and doctors and husbands and fathers revere us BECAUSE we can give life. Whether we choose to use that ability, or for whatever reason that ability is no longer ours, we are feminine. That feminism means the ability is ours, all of ours, innately. And the power that comes with it is inalienable. As long as we don't allow it to be alienated.

It's all about me...

So Happy Labor Day.

We spent the day with friends and our kiddos. I was sitting her thinking, just now, that I'm not entirely sure I even know what Labor Day is about. I mean, unlike my daughter, I knew it wasn't about Jesus. But, not exactly sure on the whole meaning. So I looked it up. Turns out I did know what it is about. Not that difficult to figure out actually.

Of course, to those of us with children "Labor Day" means something completely different. And ever since giving birth, especially naturally, I can't help but think of Labor Day that way. As if everyone should be celebrating me and the mighty power of my uterus. I'd like a special federal holiday declared for that if it's not too much trouble.

I think I will go eat cake now and celebrate my uterus. Anyone care to join me?